FACULTY AND RESEARCH
On the shelf
Every issue, we showcase some of the latest works
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When do computers become human?
A thought-provoking examination of artificial
intelligence and how it has the potential to reshape
human values, trust, and power relations around
the world. Whether in business, medicine, money,
or love, technologies powered by forms of artificial
intelligence are playing an increasingly prominent
role in our lives.
As we cede more and more decisions to thinking
machines, we face a whole host of new questions
on topics including staying safe, keeping people
in gainful employment, and having a say over
the direction of our lives. The answers to those
questions might depend on factors outside of our
control—everything from the whims of unknown AI
developers to one’s race, gender, age, typical
behavior patterns, and nationality.
New AI technologies can drive cars, treat damaged
brains, and nudge workers to be more productive,
but they can also threaten, manipulate, and alienate
us from others. They can pit nation against nation,
but can simultaneously help the global community
tackle some of its greatest challenges, from food
crises to global climate change.
In clear and accessible prose, Olaf Groth, Hult
Professor and Program Director for Digital Futures,
and Mark Nitzberg, Executive Director of the Center
for Human Compatible Artificial Intelligence at
University of California at Berkeley, explore the
history of intelligent technology and reveal how
close we are to designing machines that have
some sort of consciousness.
The book raises difficult questions that need
serious consideration from leaders of the Global
Generation, given the speed of technological
development. It is bound to make you think deeply
about what it means to be human as we edge
closer to true “symbio-intelligence” with machines.
“Groth and Nitzberg discuss the future of AI in
numerous spheres—medicine, civil defense,
education—identifying potential moral quandaries
in each. Nuanced and astute, their positive outlook,
free of the doomsday theorizing commonly
found elsewhere, makes for a refreshingly
calm discussion of the future of AI,” says
Publishers Weekly.
Solomon’s Code: Humanity in
a World of Thinking Machines
Professor Olaf Groth and Dr. Mark Nitzberg
Pegasus Books, November 2018
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